Date: 23/11/20

SEMESTER-II

ENGLISH LITERATURE (CODE- ELit)

Q. 1 Do as Directed-

a. ‘To live anyhow is better than not at all.’ Based on the given statement give a Critical
analysis of the story with special emphasis on the plot, themes, tone and characterization.

Answer: INTRODUCTION

‘To live anyhow is better than not at all’. This statement is from the short story “The Bet”
written by a well renowned writer Anton Chekov. These were spoken from the lawyer to the
banker during a party at the banker’s house where there was a debate going on that whether
life imprisonment or capital punishment is better.

About the Author

Anton Chekhov was born in a large family in Taganrog, southern Russia. His parents were
struggling shopkeepers and while his mom was caring, his dad was quite harsh.. In 1879, he
moved to Moscow and finished his degree in medicine. He continued to fill in as a specialist
doctor for the majority of his artistic vocation, composing short stories and plays in his free
time to pay for the educational cost and to help his family, for whom he was currently the
sole provider.

At 28, he won the Pushkin Prize, denoting a significant venturing stone in his vocation. At
the hour of his passing, he had wrote sixteen plays, a novel, five novellas, innumerable
letters, and more than 200 short stories. He is referred to as one of the most respected short-
story journalists and history and is one of the most often adjusted creators ever.

PLOT & SUMMARY OF THE BET

On a dark autumn night, the banker recalls a party he hosted fifteen years ago. In a flashback,
he and a few of his visitors, huge numbers of whom were writers and researchers, discuss
whether capital punishment is more moral and humane than life imprisonment. While many,

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including the banker, affirm that imprisonment is inhumane in light of the fact that it
slaughters by degrees as opposed to promptly, a youthful lawyer contends that life
imprisonment is ideal since it is better to live somehow than not at all.

The banker challenges him to be detained in a cell for 5 years and, not to be outperformed,
the lawyer demands he could do it for fifteen. The affluent financier stakes 2,000,000 rubbles
in return for the lawyer’s freedom. He additionally reminds the attorney that intentional
detainment will be a lot harder mentally than that which has been implemented.

The following evening, the lawyer is imprisoned in a garden wing of the banker’s house. He
is prohibited to leave, to communicate with anybody or even hear human voices, or to get
letters or papers. He is permitted to compose letters, understood books, play the piano, drink,
and smoke. As the years pass by, the lawyer arranges various phases of adapting to what is
basically isolation. From the outset, he is horrendously desolate and exhausted, playing the
piano, dismissing wine and tobacco, and perusing just books of a light character.

Then, in the second year of his detainment, he peruses just works of art. By the fifth year, he
has quit playing music. He composes letters yet destroys them, frequently sobbing, and
regularly beverages and smokes. Next, he ravenously examines reasoning and dialects,
turning into a specialist on a few. At that point he peruses the New Testament, and, at last,
over the most recent two years peruses haphazardly, choosing everything from Shakespeare
to the characteristic sciences.

The day preceding the lawyer is to be freed, the banker is edgy as his fortunes have totally
turned around, and he is currently so profoundly paying off debtors that he can't bear to pay
the lawyer the 2,000,000 rubbles. The banker chooses only solution is to murder the lawyer.
He escapes to the nursery, where it is storming heavily, and reasons that the guard is gone
from his post as a result of the climate. He sneaks into the lawyer's room and finds the man
snoozing, totally anorexic and wiped out gratitude to his detainment, matured a long ways
past his forty years, and appearing to be a "half-dead thing."

The banker finds the note the lawyer has composed and left on the table, which is a long
composition that announces how he scorns "opportunity, life, wellbeing and all that your
books call the endowments of the world." He has taken in an amazing sum from all that he
has perused, and feels he has voyaged everywhere on the world, seen delightful things, been
with excellent ladies, found out about the marvels of nature, and become tremendously astute.

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He discovers the entirety of that futile, nonetheless, in light of the fact that it is brief, and is
dazed by those whom he accepts "have dealt paradise for earth." As such, he repudiates the
2,000,000 rubbles and announces that he will leave five hours ahead of schedule to lose the
bet.

THEMES OF THE BET

(A) Capital punishment

The discussion which was going around the whole party was the main basis of the bet
which was placed. The banker believed that it better to kill a man in an instant rather
than killing him slowly.
(B) Life Imprisonment
The lawyer believed to be in the favour of the life imprisonment because he believed
that to live anyhow is better than not at all.
(C) Money-
Money, wealth and materialistic gratification were of utmost importance to the
banker.
(D) Books-
Books became an integral part of the lawyer which supported him through his fifteen
years times.
(E) Solitude vs. loneliness-
In the end the it was shown that whether being alone or being with people or things
who make you feel good is better than the other or not.

CHARACTERS OF THE BET

1) The Banker

Youthful, well off, and genuinely foolish toward the start of the story, the banker demands
that demise is desirable over life imprisonment and is the person who at first makes the bet
with the lawyer. In his later years, his karma has wavered and his abundance dwindled,
changing him into an edgy man. Like the regular individuals that the lawyer develops to
scorn, the banker is administered by his need to keep up his abundance regardless of the
expense.

He chooses to murder the lawyer the night prior to the banker is finished on the grounds that
he fears that the lawyer will get rich and effective with his cash while he, when all is said and

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done, turns into a hobo. After finding the lawyer’s note and finding what he has experienced
truly and mentally, in any case, the banker is racked with blame and self-loathing for making
the banker in any case.

By and by, he at last chooses to shield himself from conceivable retaliation with respect to
the lawyer by concealing the letter in his safe. A perplexing character, the banker uncovers
both unwanted certainties and redeemable real factors of the human condition.

2) The Lawyer

Only 25 years of age when he goes to the banker's gathering toward the start of the story, the
lawyer at first affirms that life-imprisonment is far desirable over the death penalty. He
demonstrates as wild as the banker in consenting to the bet and silly in extending his sentence
for some lost pride.

In contrast to the broker, notwithstanding, he isn't liable for anybody's security yet his own.
He advances as the years pass by in his cell, at last focusing on perusing as much as possible
and honing his brain. Before the finish of his 15-year term he is a totally changed man—
amazingly adapted at this point totally pretentious of every single natural thing, demanding
that they are misdirecting delusions that visually impaired individuals to the fleetingness of
life. The broker notes that the lawyer is so thin before the finish of his sentence that he is
difficult to take a gander at, rashly matured, and shows up sick. This outward appearance
stands out from the legal counselor's own conviction that he has bettered himself. He at last
denies the bet by getting away from his cell only five hours before he would be granted his
rewards.

TONE OF THE BET

(A) Lamentation
Lamentation refers to going back and forth in time. The bet took place fifteen years
ago and the story is narrated in the present day scenario.
(B) Cynical
The banker is of a cynical nature and in the end of the story when he decides to kill
the lawyer so that he could save his two million really shows it.
(C) Irony
The lawyer accepted the bet in lieu of money and in the end renounces all of it and the
banker thinks that he will be far more richer in fifteen years but is nearly broke.

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CONCLUSION

The story, written by Anton Chekhov is about the banker, the lawyer and their bet that the
lawyer would be paid if he lives in confinement for fifteen years. And towards the end, the
lawyer renounces the bet by escaping five hours before completion of the bet.

The main characters of the story are the banker and the lawyer.

The main themes are capital punishment, life imprisonment, money, books and solitude vs
loneliness.

The tones used are lamentation, cynical and irony.

b. Give a critical summary of the story ‘The Lost Child’ by Mulk Raj Anand

Answer: INTRODUCTION

This short story is written by the great Indian author, Mulk Raj Anand. The story is about a
child who always wants to have some materialistic joy but is always put down by the refusal
of his parents. When he is lost and cannot find his parents, he realizes that he wants nothing
but his parents. The main characters of this story are the child, the father, the mother and the
kind hearted stranger.

About the Author

Mulk Raj Anand was one of the first Indian writers who wrote in English and gained
popularity at an international scale. He produced a remarkable body of work that contains
several short stories, novels and essays. Anand was born in Peshawar and his father was a
coppersmith.

He first gained popularity for his novels, Untouchable and Coolie. Among his other notable
works is a trilogy consisting of The Village, Across the Black Waters and The Sword and the
Sickle. Anand wrote extensively about the lives of the poor, oppressed Indian people and
about social evils like the caste system, untouchability and communalism. Anand is regarded
as one of the founding figures of Indian English literature.

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SUMMARY OF THE LOST CHILD

The story is set during a spring festival. The road to the fair is full of people. An excited little
boy is running alongside his father. The child goes to his parents and feels the urge to tell his
parents that he wants a toy, though he knows from the look on their faces that they will
refuse. His father gives him a strict look while his mother gently tries to distract him by
showing him the flowering mustard field. The kid at that point starts pursuing dragonflies and
his mom needs to get back to him to the trail. He strolls with his parents for some time till
indeed, he gets occupied by the creepy crawlies and worms on the pathway.

As he enters the groove, blossoms start to fall upon him and he starts gathering petals. At that
point he hears birds cooing and he runs towards his folks, dropping the petals and searching
for the pigeon. He starts going around a banyan tree. As they approach the town, the
youngster sees that a gigantic group is gathering at the reasonable. He is both terrified and
intrigued. The youngster sees a sweetmeat vender's shop stacked with kaleidoscopic desserts.
He mumbles that he needs to have a burfi his favourite sweet.

Then he sees a snake charmer playing music to a snake that is coiled in a basket. The child
knows that his parents will scold him for listening to such coarse music and so he walks on
ahead.

Then the child comes upon a merry-go-round. He sees grownups and their children on it
laughing and having fun. Finally, he requests his parents for a turn at the merry-go-round, but
he receives no reply. He realises that his parents are nowhere around him. He panics and
starts running around crying for his parents. He becomes overcome with fear and runs
around, crying out for his parents. His yellow turban comes off and his clothes become dirty.

He shrieks for his parents and a man notices him and lifts him up into his arms. He shields the
child and takes him away from the crowd. The man asks him who he is and how he came to
be there. The child now cries even more bitterly and weeps for his mother and father.

To soothe the crying child, the man asks him if he wants to ride the merry-go-round. But the
child says that he just wants his parents back. He then takes him to the snake charmer and

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tells him to listen to the music. But the child puts his hands over his ears and cries even
louder. He keeps saying that he wants his parents.

Lastly, the man brings the child back to the sweet-seller, hoping to console him with a sweet.
He asks the child to choose a sweet. But the child continues to sob and says that all he wants
are his mother and father.

THEME OF THE LOST CHILD

The basic THEMEE of the story "The Lost Child" is the universality of a kid's craving for all
that he sets his eyes on. All that the youngster witnesses—from the toys coating the road, to
the mythical serpent flies in the mustard field, to the snake influencing to the tunes of a snake
charmer's pungi—obsesses the kid. His parents then again resemble a parental control
channel, causing him to avoid him from the draws of the illusionary world as though subtly
realizing that what he needs most is something different completely.

In the end when the youngster loses his parents. He understands since what he needed most
was his parents. He persistently denies all that the benevolent more peculiar proposals to
comfort him with—exactly the same things he was driving his folks for minutes back. Inside
minutes his life changes and offers him a completely new viewpoint of taking a gander at life
and understanding what is really significant.

CHARACTERS OF THE LOST CHILD

1) The Child

The child is youthful and loaded with delight and fervour at the idea of visiting the
reasonable. He is pulled in by all the sights and hints of the reasonable. Like all
offspring of his age, he needs whatever gets his extravagant, regardless of whether a
sweetmeat or a dragonfly. He is anyway very submissive and restrained as he doesn't
pitch a fit when his parents don't give him any of the things that he requests. In the
end he breaks down into tears as he understands that he has lost his folks and puts
forth a courageous attempt to search for them, nearly getting stomped all over by the
individuals at the sanctuary before he is protected by an outsider. Very similar things

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 that he had wanted a short time prior lose all importance when he gets isolated from
his folks.

2) The Parents

The father of the child appears to be a strict disciplinarian who does not give into the
demands of the child for toys and sweets. He is the head of the family and both his
wife and child do not question his decisions. In fact he seems to be leading the family,
expecting them to follow him without dawdling.

The mother has been described as a typical loving mother who tries to soften the
disappointment of the child by diverting his attention from the objects that he wants to
possess. She seems to be tom between her husband and her child as she struggles to
keep pace with her husband and at the same time keep her child from straying. At
some point her attention seemed to have wavered, when her child gets separated from
her.

3) The Stranger

The stranger appears to be a kind hearted man who rescues the lost child from under the
feet of people thronging outside the temple. He tries hard to stop the child from weeping
by offering him all the goodies at the fair and appears to be genuinely concerned to
restore the child to his parents.

CONCLUSION

The story highlights the value of relationships over material goods. The child realises the
true value of his parents once he is separated from them. It also sheds light on the
universal fear of children and parents of getting separated from one another and the result
of such a calamity as seen from the eyes of a little child.

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 Q.3 Explain with the reference to context-

a)

Poem; Strange Meeting

Poet; Wilfred Owen

Introduction

Strange meeting is written by the British poet Wilfred Owen. He was a soldier in the world
war – I. Owen fought and died in the world war – I due to a fatal wound just a week before
the war ended in May 1918. The poem was published posthumously in 1919; it is an
imaginative recreation of alleged occurring after death or even a cycle in the creative mind of
a living man in the afterlife.

About The Author

Wilfred Owen is a renowned author and poet who has penned down some of the best British
poetry on World War I as he was himself a soldier in War, wrote almost all of his works from
August 1917 to September 1918. He succumbed in the war in November of 1918. Only five
of his poems were not published posthumously others being posthumously published.

Synopsis Of the Poem

The poem is set in World War I background. The speaker of the poem, who is a soldier, has
come down to "Hell." There, he encounters a soldier from the opposing army, who reveals at
the end of the poem that the one who killed him was the speaker. As it focuses on the
common humanity of these two men and the wider horrors of war, the poem is profoundly
pessimistic. While the poem indicates that human beings are not going to stop fighting
anytime soon, it also calls for unity and harmony to replace such violence.

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CONTEXT

The poem is narrated by an Allied English trooper who escapes from the horrors of
combativeness just to find himself in hell where he is meets with an enemy German officer
whom he had murdered during an encounter. The poem in general is very pessimistic, though
the poem talks about the realities of war and how it de-humanises a soldier and also goes onto
claim that human beings aren't going to stop fighting anytime soon, but it calls for such
violence to be replaced by reconciliation and solidarity. The poem is written in the first
person; it can be safely assumed that Wilfred Owen and the narrator is the same person and
that this is Owen’s private journey into hell.

SUMMARY

Strange meeting is narrated by a soldier who died during a war and ends up in Hell. There he
meets a man whom he recognizes as a somewhat familiarity and calls him strange friend.
This other man tells the storyteller that the two of them supported similar expectations and
dreams, yet they have both died and came to hell, incapable to tell the living how pathetic and
miserable war truly is. This other soldier at that point uncovers to the storyteller that he is the
enemy soldier whom the storyteller killed in fight yesterday. He tells the storyteller that they
should rest now and try to forget the past.

EXPLANATION

In the give paragraph the poet meets the stranger in a dark tunnel which is metaphor for hell.
He describes the place where one could see all the fear etched into his face even though none
of the blood or violence from the battle up above reached the hall where we stood. They
couldn’t hear the artillery firing down there; the guns didn’t make the chimneys in the hall
groan. The poet said to him, “Unfamiliar friend, there’s no reason to be sad down here.” He
replied: “No reason except for all the years I'm missing out on, and the loss of hope. You and
I had the same hopes. I threw myself into seeking the most beautiful thing in the world, and
I'm not talking about physical beauty. This beauty makes fun of time as it steadily passes by.
If this beauty is sad, its sadness is so much richer than the sadness you find down here.

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Themes of the poem -

1. The horrors of war - Owen does not shy away from depicting the horrors of war. He
makes his reader confront the atrocities on the battlefield and the indignities of life
back home. He shows how the war affects the young men who fight both physically
and psychologically. The men who survive become injured to brutality.

2. The irrationality of war - Throughout Owen's poems the theme of the irrationality of
the war is woven. The soldiers do not seem to know what they are fighting for,
possessing no lofty goals and expressing no sentiment regarding why they are there.
The horrors of war are not explained away or justified by a noble cause. Owen's view
that the war is absurd and incomprehensible is quite manifest.

Poetic Devices Used –

1. Simile - ‘as if to bless’ - It is possible to read this as a comparison, a simple simile

describing the way the hands are raised.
‘swift with the swiftness of the tigress’- giving the impression of speed and violence
more terrible than the contemporary war.

2. Symbolism - Hell: It is ironic that this is where Owen arrives when he escapes the
war, thereby conveying his fears for the future of humanity
Blood and water: symbolises the agony and loss of life due to war and water the
means of healing

3. Personification - That sullen hall: Hell takes on a human mood

‘No guns...down the flues made moan’: reminds us of the angry guns of Anthem for
Doomed Youth.

CONCLUSION

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The poem is said to be somewhat different from the other war poems, as it does not glorifies
war or show us the physical nature of war through blood and gore but it does its job, the job
which two soldiers ought to do. It shows the true nature of war and depicts the pains and the
pointlessness of war. Strange Meeting makes the reader identify the atrocities of war and
makes them yearn for a peaceful world.

b)

Poem: Unknown Citizens

Poet: W.H.Auden

INTRODUCTION

“The Unknown Citizen" was written by the British poet W.H. Auden, not long after he
moved to America in 1939, and the poem gives evidence of his culture shock when suddenly
confronted with American-style chaos and consumerism.

SYNOPSIS

The poem is a humorous elegy written in praise of a man who died recently and who led what
was considered an admirable life by the government. This life seems to have been entirely
ho-hum, exemplary only to the degree that this man never did anything to challenge or
deviate from the standards of society. The poem also builds a frightening picture of a world
ruled by total conformity and state oppression, in which a bureaucratic government dictates
and spies on its citizens' daily lives.

CONTEXT

The poem is written in the voice of a fictional government bureaucrat. But the poem doesn’t
sound as pessimistic or tortured as either of these novels It uses good old-fashioned humor to
protest the numbing effects of modern life. It’s not the most "intellectual" of Auden’s works,
but that doesn’t make it any less powerful to read. "The Unknown Citizen" is proof that great
poetry doesn’t have to take itself seriously all the time.

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EXPLANATION

The tone of the poem is impersonal and clinical, the speaker more than likely a suited
bureaucrat expressing the detached view of the state. There is mention of the Social
Psychology department, part of the state who no doubt investigated his background when he
died, and found all was normal according to his mates.

He bought a newspaper each day, that is, he read the propaganda dished out by the bias press,
and had no adverse reaction to the advertisements in that paper.

He's not a critical thinker but a solid type of guy who you would want living next door. He
keeps up with his household goods, he adheres to all societal rules. This man is an average
Joe, a perfect citizen who is conditioned to routine and will never question the settled life,
unless the state call on him for purposes of war.

But note that the speaker mentions the Eugenist - a person who investigates eugenics, the
genetic make up of this man's family - and coldly says that his 5 children was the 'right
number' for his generation. As if the state was counting, making sure they had enough fresh
conformists to carry on in the Greater Community.

The last two lines are puzzling and certainly ambiguous. The speaker is being facetious by
asking if this man was free or happy, for the state, the bureaucratic machine knows nothing of
these two immeasurable qualities. The speaker knows that those in power have put in place
all that is necessary to nullify the citizen - effective propaganda being their main tool. This is
how they get rid of critical thinking, of freedom of speech, of social unrest and protest.

RHYME

The rhyme scheme changes a few times throughout the poem. Most frequently the reader
notices rhyming couplets. These sometimes use the same number of syllables, but they are
not heroic couplets and also not iambic pentameter. This change in rhyme increases the dry
humour of the poem.

TONE OF THE POEM

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The speaker in this poem, probably a faceless bureaucrat given a standard set of lines to reel
out, creates a tone of cold and calculating indifference.

As the reader progresses, the dry, emotionless content takes control and by half way it is clear
that monotony is king. There is no colour, no personal reference points, no description of
personality, no life. This increasingly dull tone is reinforced by bland repetition. The poem
reflects the fact that a human being has been reduced to numbers and letters on a monument,
that a citizen is now estranged from humanity

CONCLUSION

Overall, then, Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen” reads as a cautionary tale to modern society
—asking people to question the relationship between the state and the individual, and to
examine whether their government upholds the right values in terms of what it means to live
a good life. Ironic and a little funny, yes, the poem nevertheless offers a stark and bleak
picture of a sinister world in which genuine freedom is impossible.

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